But a new grip closes around the leather of the bottle. The female takes it from him.
Now, her translucent hair is braided up the middle of her scalp into a ponytail at her crown, and it’s perfect. Not a strand out of place, not a tendril falling into her sharp features.
But no matter how she does her hair, it’s still just so fucking strange every time I look at her. I’ve seen pale hair before, blond and white and grey, bleached strands hanging on within an inch of their lives—but never have I seen such a translucent sheen before.
It’s amplified in the moody torchlight.
It’s the hue of an icicle growing on the ceiling of a cave.
It’sglass.
I watch as Glass brings the bottle to her white lips before she chugs back a hefty amount of what I can only guess is wine—justby the pungent, fruity stench of it but with that sour undertone of vinegar.
The bottle comes away from her now-stained lips. She throws a purplish grin at Samick, an answer to words he garbled in their language.
She passes it off to the fae beside her, that feral one whose teeth are lethally sharp.
Shark.
The moment I think it, the name I’ve assigned him, the pink of his eyes flitters over me for the shortest beat before he downs a few gulps of the drink, then passes it to the next.
This fae is a rainforest, rich greens and soil.
His dark hair ropes down his back in a braid that impresses me. A braid that I wouldn’t think a male could do himself.
But they all do it, I’ve noticed.
Those with longer hair work the strands into intricate braids of all sorts. His is a rope, one that starts from his hairline, then zigzags around his scalp before falling into a single piece that reaches down to the rock he’s hunched on.
The warmth of his skin has a certain lush bark hue to it, and the unnatural greens of his eyes are portals to rainforests.
Then all I see is warped, glittering purple as he throws his head back and his throat bobs with the gulps.
I watch the bobbing of his throat—the glisten of the oil he rubbed into his skin earlier. They all did, like some of the captives down by the river, they all kneaded that warm oil barrier onto their bodies.
But the cold one didn’t.
The frown I cut aside to him goes unnoticed.
He’s slightly angled away from me, speaking in low murmurs with Glass, though there’s still that edge of disinterest in him, a perpetual distance that he keeps even with his own kind.
I sink into my isolation—the tedium of it.
My back relaxes against the bite of the boulder, and I press my cheek into the curve of the other smooth rock.
The distant splashing of other pools carries on around us, with that dangerous sound of laughter like it’s edged with blades, but this group feels a touch calmer.
I’m quiet, watching their mouths move around words I don’t understand, watching the bottles pass between them, teeth flashing in grisly grins.
It goes on too long until a flicker of marble catches my attention.
The cold warrior reaches down for my backpack, then grabs a fistful of the screechy material.
He drags it to settle between his boots, luring me to sit upright, to turn with his movement, twist around and watch as he tugs the zip undone.
The glance I throw at the faces around the misty pool is swift. None of them pay attention to the cold one going through my things. The bottle and shared gravelly words are more interesting to them.
Glass has turned fully to Shark now, and Rainforest has lured out small instrument from somewhere, sort of like a flute but not quite as thick or long.
